Yeah, the series has had its weepy, dopey moments but the character has always been willing to fight his own wars. He just got out of the mass slaughter business when it became a PR liability. And when he built a set of armor for his best friend, it was dubbed War Machine. (Perhaps Rhodey will be armored up in the sequel.)

The Ultimate Iron Man version is cooler. He drinks because his life was constant pain due to his unusual neurology.

And yeah, the first two Spider-Man movies sucked ass, although the first one gets a little better once the initial disappointment wears off. Never bothered to watch Spider-Man 3, but I understand that it's chock full of moral relativism and other bits of lefty squish.

When my son saw it in the theater, the audience applauded when Peter Parker smacked Mary Jane. That's how annoying she was.

I found some clips of 'Wings' on YouTube to show the younguns where Thomas Hayden Church got his career started. That blew their young minds. Now, if I can only find some clips of Johnny Depp from his 21 Jump Street days.

13
Eh, must be a guy thing. For some strange reason that pic reminds me of Willie Ames in Bibleman.

Posted by: funky chicken at February 29, 2008 09:07 AM (I+jPP)

14Yeah, the series has had its weepy, dopey moments but the character has always been willing to fight his own wars.

That's what I've always loved about the series, Stark does it himself. There's a nod to the whole omg war is bad m'kay ethos but in the end, the bad guys blow up. I've assumed it's going to be evil conservatives ruling the government secretly since they announced production. That script has been set since the 70's, you really think it's going to change now? I think Downey actually is perfectly cast, I mean, come on, who else are you going to cast to play an arrogant, alcoholic, sarcastic asshole.

As long as a lot of shit blows up a really lot, I'll be happy. Note to self: since we're getting more global warmening tonight, it might be a good time to do that ID4, Transformers, Die Hard, Resident Evil marathon. Further note to self: Remember to stop for vodka and cheetos.

I not really hot on comic books/manga to begin with, but some aspects of the characters are stories seem cool. It appeals alot more as a movie or a cartoon. Like Batman (the movie) or Batman (the cartoon) or Justice League.

At it's best it's not bad at all..but I really don't quite get US comics. The Japanese create so much more varied and complicated and interesting (and sometimes mature) stories with that medium.

All the US stuff is just your boilerplate brightly-colored-spandex-underwear-clad Superhero stuff. Any time the creators try to be, uh,....creative and add a bit, it ends up being atrocious crap. Usually grossly oversimplistic moralizing. Like Uncle Pinky's link above about the achoholic who's not. But he has to be achoholic, even though he's not, because that's a good part of what distinguishes Iron Man from every other radioactive mutant superman with magic underpants.

Well, there's the whole thing about him wearing a robot suit instead of a leotard, which is admirable. We've got that going for him.

Here are some key points from that script review, so you don't have to read it yourself...

There is no featured "villain", for one [or no focus, so the movie will go completely off the rails within the first five minutes. Thanks Hollywood! ed.]. Sure,
there are bad guys and epic battles and plenty of global espionage, but no
Mandarin to be found. And don't worry about the inclusion of War Machine, the
character in the movie is a completely different beast than in the comics, so
it's obviously in poor taste. [Is there a special course in film school titled "How to piss off your core audience"? ed.]

If done right, this script could have been a vessel for
great political and social commentary while seeing Iron Man beat the crap out
of the bad guys. [Groan. Pick up a book if you want commentary. ed.]

It's honestly not a big deal that they changed this story
aspect from the source material, because it is a film and films need to work as
a movie and not as a direct interpretation of the source material. [War Machine is now Stark's father. Stark's father kills Stark's love interest and is part of a global corporate conspiracy to invade America, from the inside. But, hey! Other than that, it's identical to the original. See above coursework. ed]

Another aspect of this script, that is wonderful in every
way, that could have provided further motivation for Tony's future alcoholism
as well as his super heroics: Bethany, the leading lady and the love interest
for Tony, is murdered at the end by Howard Stark, as revenge for Tony's mother,
which Howard believes to be Tony's fault. [And the entire audience is violently ejected from the movie, because nobody will believe that. Why does he blame Tony, why not just kill Tony, so on. Groan. ed.]

23
Anti American movie?At the end of the clip, Ironman is shown blowing up an American M1 tank with a missile. The tank probably isn't being run by a US Army or Marine crew. The tank probably just got stolen or something.

Posted by: dri at February 29, 2008 10:18 AM (ftN71)

24
The Jaws book came out before the movie. The book was a monster best-seller and the movie improved greatly upon the book by leaving out the Mafia sub-plot. (yes, there was a MAFIA angle in the original novel)
It's not THAT unusual for a movie to be better than the original source material. Consider "The Ten Commandments".

Posted by: 400 Year Old Clam at February 29, 2008 10:27 AM (TRAcC)

25
Also in Jaws (book) Hooper bangs Brody's wife and gets eaten by the shark.

The Da Vinci Code movie, as bad as it was, was probably not as bad as the book.

When Worlds Collide and War of the Worlds, and for that matter The Time Machine are all genre classics--talking the George Pal movies, now. Ballmer and Wylie's book was very good (and holds up pretty well) but not the classic that the movie is. It's been a while since I've read Wells, but his stuff is pretty dry.

You get into questions of what it means for one work of art to be "better" than another, and in this case, two works of art in different media. Books are a different experience from movies, and very rarely do you get a Silence of the Lambs, where the movie adheres faithfully to the book and manages to become a classic, where the source material (while very good) is unlikely to achieve the same relative respect.

Most often, the movie will diverge from the book somewhat to make something more watchable (see Spielberg's removal of the rape scene from the opening of The Color Purple) or completely reinvent the idea (James Whale's Frankenstein). Unfortunately, if you don't have a Spielberg or a Whale (and sometimes even if you do) you end with crap.

28
" The comic book itself was anti-war. Stark became an alcoholic, didn't he, over his guilt for providing armaments for Vietnam?"

That books' had a long, mixed history.In the 1960s, anti-communist and not anti-war.In the 1970s, anti-war but not anti-communist.In the 1980s, quasi-anti-"establishment," still with lots of vintage commie villains from the 1960s.In the 1990s, as unreadable as most mainstream comics in that dark time.In the 2000s, so unreadable that even I stopped reading it.

Only for about the last 30% of his publishing career, but yeah. Hopefully, please Odin, they'll be drawing from the earlier source material for his characterization. That looks like a bad bet, though, going by how much whiskey we saw him put away in that trailer just now.

MarkD 11 / "Hollywood can't even make a movie that's as good as a comic book."

The bar may not be set as high as you think. IM was a real stinker in the 1970s and again in the 1990s. It's had some high points, though, like any property would that stays around that long. There actually have been long runs of good Hulk stories and good Daredevil stories, for instance. Just not recently, is all.

Posted by: Stoop Davy Dave at February 29, 2008 11:16 AM (8xWCA)

29
>>>Anti-war doesn't have to be anti-America. Nearly every
soldier/marine/sailor I've ever known was anti-war. But you don't stop
war by wishing it away. You stop it by killing all the bad-guys.

True enough. But anyone hoping that this movie will be a rousing "let's get the terrorists" movie should probably be cautioned to temper that hope.

Yes, bad guys will be beaten up, but they'll be in cahoots with Evil US Military-Industrial Complex Guys (Stark's rivals-- he's the only good man building, or using, weapons).

Posted by: ace at February 29, 2008 11:18 AM (SXBHu)

30
D'oh! I carelessly dropped the attribution (Techie /
from the "Stark is the arch-neocon of the Marvel Universe" quote. But I'm a moron, so you'd expect that, righ?

Posted by: Stoop Davy Dave at February 29, 2008 11:24 AM (8xWCA)

31
Also, I don't know where the fuck that emoticon came from, just now. It's Techie's remark from COMMENT NUMBER EIGHT that's being cited ... oh never mind!

Robt. Downey Jr reappears as Iron Man in The Incredible Hulk Starring Edward Norton as the Hulk and co-starring Tim Roth and William Hurt and Liv Tyler: http://imdb.com/title/tt0800080/

Interesting year for superheroes

Posted by: Steve at February 29, 2008 11:35 AM (lv+sJ)

34
Anti American movie?
At the end of the clip, Ironman is shown blowing up an American M1 tank with a missile. The tank probably isn't being run by a US Army or Marine crew. The tank probably just got stolen or something.
Posted by: dri at February 29, 2008 03:18 PM (ftN71)
Not surprising considering that most of the high rollers in Hollywood think our troops are either dumb enough to let the bad guys just drive off, unmolested, in one of our tanks or are baby killers who deserve to be executed by a superhero.

Posted by: funky chicken at February 29, 2008 11:36 AM (I+jPP)

35
Jon Favreau, the director is not a leftist nutcase. He's one of the few in Hollywood who aren't.

Posted by: Ann NY at February 29, 2008 11:38 AM (Ofd1W)

36
I have to keep telling all the lefties I know that <i>everyone</i> is anti-war. No one is pro-war. All sane people hate war. But when you are attacked by crazy people who want you dead then you have to stop them. No one enjoys it or hopes for it. We all dislike war. But sometimes you just have to respond to attackers. You may not enjoy it but it is necessary. No one wants war. Not even right wingers. But you can dislike it while recognizing the need for it.

Posted by: Steve at February 29, 2008 11:40 AM (lv+sJ)

37
Instead of seeing this film, I'll just watch Transformers five more times. That film had everything- evil alien robot demons, a shotgun-toting SecDef, and heroic troops, with just a splash of conspiracy.

39
I'm actually guessing this is less about anti war and more about anti arms merchants. My theory is that Tony Stark builds and sells fantastic weapons to whoever pays the price, including psychotic despots around the world, and must use his armor to destroy those weapons to erase the misery they've caused. Sort of an Armor Wars with more mundane gear (if you're an Iron Man fan from years back).

That link wouldn't open on this crap box, but I'm dubious, having sat thru about a dozen fake-ass fan-made trailers for Justice League, all of which were obviously cobbled together out of older comix movies. YouTube is apparently the new fanfic.

But if you're right, good.

Posted by: Huck Foley at February 29, 2008 01:04 PM (YNXM1)

41The Japanese create so much more varied and complicated and interesting (and sometimes mature) stories with that medium.

Sigh, yet another person who thinks that DC and Marvel are the only companies on earth and only reads their four color superheroic stuff.

Anyone who thinks the Japanese are such incredible innovators in comics hasn't had to wade through the mountains of manga crap to find the good stuff.

Well, of course. But they're doing different shit. Over here, It's all Marvel and DC. The guys who do all manner of varied shit, some of which is interesting and some of which sucks, are the indie types that generally don't get movies made out of their shit. Over there they become the big names and get turned into anime.

I don't really like any manga anyway either. Like I said I'm not big on manga or comics. Truth be told, I haven't read much of either. I'm mostly judging them through their adaptations into movies/cartoons/anime.

I can stand a small quotient of leotarded superheros. I like Justice League cartoons, I like Batman. (I hate Superman)

But the Superhero-in-tights-fighting-arch-nemesis formula isn't a 24/7 affair. I like a little bit of Batman now and then, but not buckets of Batman all the time, along with Superman, Iron Man, [insert theme]man, and SpinOff Woman.

That was the point I was trying to make though. They've been riding Supermans coat-tails for like 60 goddamn years. Batman and Spiderman and Iron Man and the X-Men aren't exactly new either. WTF? The formula is a winner but you're overplaying it. It needs periodic rest.

And, like I said, whenver they try to deviate from the mold of what they've been doing very generically for 60 years, you wind up with mostly shit. It's when Batman or Iron Man are NOT blowing up the enemy (because that gets old) that they start campainging against the overt racism of republicans or something. What the hell else are you going to have them do that they haven't allready done?

If you're going to -add- anything to the Batman franchise, you better have one hell of a rare exceptional story for him or your wasting our time.

Anyway - the point here is the only way Hollywood is going to make a decent comic movie is if they make it just a comic movie. And they can't do that because, well, we've seen that 50 times and it hasn't had it's rest. They can't just stick to the (winning) formula and give us the boilerplate Underpantsed Superhero Defeats Melodramatic Evil Genius, because even though that works and is good, that shit will get old without any twists or breaks.

And it's the twists. It's the ways they try to deviate from that, to stand out and actually provide something new, that will cause the whole thing to suck to major ass. Because this is hollywood. Since when do they have good ideas? They're going to have Iron Man fighting AIDs in Africa to atone for his Vietnam weapon engineering or something.

And the comic book writers don't seem to me to fair much better on this part.

The Japanese no doubt produce tremendous amounts of utter shit too, not to mention a bottomless pit of completely shameless pandering to perversity. But can you see Marvel/DC or the guys who are writing Spiderman trying to figgure out how to unmarry him coming up with Death Note or Full Metal Alchemist? Never. Or, if they are, it sure as hell isn't making it into Movie/Cartoon crossover.

So, let me rephrase - the comics that get turned into anime/movies are way more original and innovative in Japan.

Posted by: Entropy at February 29, 2008 02:34 PM (HgAV0)

46
Pretty sure that is a T-80/T-90 series tank, not an Abrams. There are some vids out of the inevitable video-game tie in, and ol' shellhead looks to be burning through waves of Russian junk like Mig- 29s and Su-27s.

Must be. The movie was classic. The book... read it a long time ago when I was a kid and it was entertaining enough, but it sure seemed like potboiler trash.

Posted by: ace at February 29, 2008 06:26 PM (SXBHu)

58
Eh... if I worried about irritating left-wing politics in my entertainment I'd have to throw out two-thirds the DVDs in my collection, including all my Miyazaki anime. I enjoyed the comic when I was a kid, and this movie looks decent enough.

59
Spider-Man is one of those few movies/trilogies that seemed good in the theater but becomes weaker the more one examines it.

After seeing the 1st and 2nd movies a couple of times, I believe Raimi fck'd up the pacing. Of course, he wasn't guaranteed 3 movies from the start but I think Parker's transformation should have been a lot more gradual.

The first movie should have featured a Parker screwing up as Spidey, flailing around in the homemade suit as he did in part of the 1st act. The 1st movie should have culminated with Parker becoming a half-way decent superhero, but just barely, not a quicksilver dart that had nothing to fear.

The 2nd one really pissed me off with the swinging between truck trailers thing. At no point in the first half of Spidey 2 did it ever seem that he was in any kind of danger. Nope, just a CG character swinging around without a care in the world. That is deification and boredom quickly ensued.

The 3rd seems like a case of 24th level D&D characters. When D&D characters reach higher levels, the ridiculous factor is elevated to the point where you are visiting ethereal plains of existance and fighting demi-gods. It's only fun for an hour.

Better pacing: 1st movie - homemade Spidey who climbs walls and shoot webs with only accidental success2nd - figures out how to swing from point-a to point b and then eats building facade3rd - swinging thing down, webslinging no problem, still unsure of his potential and that of the super-villains.

Then again, I'm sure Raimi spends more on hookers and coke every day than I have made in my life.

Posted by: adamthemad at February 29, 2008 07:27 PM (cJ/nR)

60
I liked the first two Spiderman movies a LOT, but the third was just terrible. That wasn't Raimi's fault, you could tell what his story was (Sandman) and he had a good one in mind, but the studios forced like 1237918 villains and plot lines into a single movie and he didn't have much of a choice but to make a hash of things. He probably did the best that could be done under the circumstances, but it still was lousy.

That's just about the time the Gwyneth F-ing Paltrow showed up on the screen.

Hey, Gwyneth Paltrow was in a little movie called Seven and she was great in it. Especially the last scene where she was in a small box.

Posted by: Ostral-B Heretic at February 29, 2008 11:39 PM (+P4HU)

6753
Does anyone else boggle at the awesome stoopidity implied in US troops
letting this high-value asset lurch drunkenly around Injun country
without a scrap of body armor?
Posted by: richard mcenroe at February 29, 2008 08:43 PM

Tony was in a business suit in Vietnam too. (Eww. Sweaty.) Just swap Vietnam for Iraq/Afghanistan and the film makers are tracking the same plot from 1963 (or at least what we can see from the trailers.) That's the way Lee and Kirby/Heck envisioned it.

Would the real US Military do it? No.

My opinion: Best Shellhead run is still Tales of Suspense with Lee and Heck/Colon followed by Iron Man Vol 1 with Lee and Tuska/Craig.

Comic Book Geek. '60's Comic Book Geek, that is.

~Penmaster

Posted by: Penmaster at March 01, 2008 02:44 AM (D/0+D)

68
"Best Shellhead run is still Tales of Suspense with Lee and Heck/Colon"

Ugh. Colon was still signing his stuff "Adam Austin," and who can blame him? IM was stiff and obese, and at least two whole issues went by where, seriously, absolutely NOTHING happened except a lotta angsty weeping about Senator Byrd's investigation and Tony's crapped-out heart. Kirby's Captain America was totally carrying that title, especially towards the end. Not that I, er, completely geek out over paleo-Marvel or anything, no no, you see, it's just... ...wait, I thought I had a question... oh yes: So the bald guy in the kaffiyeh in the trailer, filling the "Half-Face" role, are they passing him off as "The Mandarin" or what? Damn it, where's his snydelywhiplash MOUSTACHE?? How the hell do you have a Mandarin without a snydelywhiplash moustache? It just ain't right!

Posted by: Stoop Davy Dave at March 01, 2008 07:16 AM (8xWCA)

69
D'OH!Inexplicably, Gene Colan DID sign his own name to the quite-bad artwork complained about above. He got much better, later.

72
I'm a bit late to the party with this observation, but remember the smuggled video from a comic con where the trailer was first unveiled? It was a different cut than any of the trailers I've seen around now. It made special mention of the role of that odd little guy in the vest and tie who is now only seen as Stark drops the mask on the table he's sitting at. That odd little guy is the one who created the glowing device on Stark's chest; an electro-magnet which keeps shell fragments away from Stark's heart.

In the con trailer, the guy tells Stark that injuries such as his are a common sight "in the villages" or somesuch. The implication is that innocent people get hurt by weapons of war (whoa.) This leads to the line in this trailer where Stark says he has to protect the people who are harmed by his weapons.

The question is how much this movie will dump on the American military. Will it play as Stark verses the inbred baby killers? Stark verses the evil capitalists and Generals who lead decent soldiers astray?

Didn't any of these jerks notice that Saddam Hussein would put women and children in or around military targets so that our fear of hurting innocents would protect those installations?

Damn. Enough. Nobody is even looking at this thread anymore, I guess. Bloody waste of time.

#46 "The Japanese no doubt produce tremendous amounts of utter shit too, not to mention a bottomless pit of completely shameless pandering to perversity. But can you see Marvel/DC or the guys who are writing Spiderman trying to figgure out how to unmarry him coming up with Death Note or Full Metal Alchemist? Never. Or, if they are, it sure as hell isn't making it into Movie/Cartoon crossover.So, let me rephrase - the comics that get turned into anime/movies are way more original and innovative in Japan." Entropy

Japanese anime is more innovative, but some of it expresses virulent anti-Americanism. Frequently, the term "the American Empire" and "CIA" is thrown about the dialogue. For example, Ghost in the Shell includes an episode where the evil American CIA approves a project to psych-out-the-enemy by torturing innocent Vietnamese women-- by the means of somewhat reproducing the Buffalo Bill skinning techniques used in Silence of the Lambs

One of the ugliest anime plots painting the American military and governmental leadership as despicable criminals was contained in the TV series Blood +--currently being produced as a movie.* I'm not referring to the short movie released some years ago, but rather, the long-running TV series.

In that series, the US military and government is shown engaging in all sorts of horrible nastiness: For example, they allowed their soldiers and their families to be used as subjects in blood contamination experiments- which of course, turn them into mindless, misshapen vampire monsters that murder their families.

Another plot line is the American plan to introduce that same blood additive into the worlds food supply, causing millions of the world's citizens to change into monsters and begin the carnage. All of this intentional murder is done for the purpose of giving the United States the right to send in military forces, and gain control of Africa, Asia and so forth. Remember, this isnt Lex Luther trying (once again) to destroy the world to gain real estate; its the American President and his top brass taking on the role of mad scientist.

In print, the storys far-fetched plot seems far too goofy to impact anyone. Yet, the idea that the lust for power would motivate American leaders murder own children, as well as other countries, does resemble a dKos diary entry.

How much influence can this sort of creative media have on adolescents? Do they blow it off as just entertainment? Or, was this message--that the United States would commit worldwide mass murder in order to gain American world dominance--communicated through anime to millions of Japanese children and to millions of our teenaged boys watching the WAM channel?

Just silly cartoons? Or does a steady diet gradually introduce a subconscious idea in young minds that the US and its Military are the evil empire?

Or maybe I'm writing absolute nonsense, and need some sleep?

* I was amazed to read that our military had given the producers permission to use an American military base (active?) in Japan to film the movie. I wasn't able to confirm that story, but if true, I wonder if the military understood the entire plot. If the military PR people only reviewed the short movie, the anti-American dialogue doesn't appear in that version.